FLORIAN ZELLER’S THEATRE. AN AESTHETICS OF LOSS AND CONFUSION

The article analyses the contribution of the French playwright, novelist, and film director Florian Zeller to the reconfiguration of contemporary theatre through an aesthetic of fragility, confusion, and vulnerability. Zeller advances a poetics of introspection and silence, transforming loss and the disintegration of perception into resources of artistic expression. The study traces the author’s evolution from prose to dramaturgy, the space in which he crystallizes his vision of time, memory, and identity. The analysis focuses on the trilogy The Mother (2010), The Father (2012), and The Son (2018), regarded as the core of Zeller’s oeuvre. These three texts are interpreted as a dramaturgy of perception and familial dissolution, in which loss, whether of memory, unity, or meaning, becomes both a structural and thematic axis. Through stage techniques such as alternating sets, repetition, and meaningful pauses, Zeller creates a sensorial experience that directly involves the spectator in the process of confusion, transforming them from a detached observer into an active participant. The article further examines the reception of Zeller’s dramaturgy in the Romanian theatrical space, highlighting successive stagings of the trilogy in major theatres (such as Bulandra, Nottara, and others) and its strong impact on audiences. In the final section, the study addresses the cinematic transposition of Zeller’s universe through his films The Father (2020) and The Son (2022), both directed by the author himself. These films revisit the central themes of his theatre and amplify them through the specific means of cinematic language, thereby confirming the coherence and continuity of Zeller’s aesthetic across stage and screen.